Vimeo Short Film Of The Week: ‘Enhanced’

Bottle Rocket, The Evil Dead, District 9 and Boogie Nights. Four fantastically different movies with one thing in common … before they were feature films, they were all successful shorts. With an eye out for the next big film (or filmmaker), Cut Print Film aims to shine a light on the dark corners of the short film universe. We may not find that diamond in the ruff, but at least we’ll have some short-form fun trying.

The Film: Short film or feature, acting can make or break a movie. If you watch enough shorts, you’re bound to see some dreadful performances. Too often, short films forgo the luxury of quality acting in service of showcasing style. The sacrifice invariably lessens the impact of the final product.Writer/Director Jeremy David White seems keenly aware of this predicament. With Enhanced, the gifted young director keeps his story concise and sharply focused on a singular character. Allowing his star Timm Sharp to own the moment, White showcases a fine-tuned vision of an eerie new world with the assuredness of veteran filmmaker … and tells a pointedly human story in the process.

The Plot: A stand-up comedian desperately clings to his own humanity as the world around him evolves in an unnerving way.

Why Press Play?

The phrase, “keep it simple stupid” may have been coined by a short-form filmmaker. Probably not. Either way, Jeremy David White takes the words to heart with his technophobic film, Enhanced. Behind arrant, often invasive photography from Phil Klucartis, Enhanced delivers an arresting level of claustrophobic intimacy within every moment. The immediate, yet surreal atmosphere is augmented by Blake Armstrong’s strikingly simple, astonishingly effective make-up effect for the “enhanced” population. Presented in a subtly stylistic way, Enhanced hinges entirely on Timm Sharp’s performance. Savvy cinephiles will recognize Sharp from nearly two decades of stellar supporting work in film and TV. Given center stage here – all puns intended – Sharp does not disappoint. Gloomy, giddy, tragic and triumphant, Sharp packs a lifetime of emotion into his performance and never plays a false note in projecting the character’s obvious inner turmoil. Guiding Sharp through it all is the sure-handed direction of White, whose screenplay walks a tightrope between comedy and drama, capturing the binary essence of humanity with uncommon ease.

Hope you enjoy Enhanced! With a luminous performance here, Timm Sharp is turning into an actor to watch. Keep an eye out for his starring role in Linas Phillips’ upcoming Rainbow Time (2016). Take note of Jeremy David White’s name as well. I have a feeling you’re going to be hearing a lot out of him moving forward. He’ll be taking his particular aesthetic to a larger stage in a segment of the upcoming Robert Boswell short story mashup, The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastard (2016). If you can’t wait ’til next year, hop on over to White’s Vimeo channel and have a look at his spectacular short, The First Hope (2013). While you’re there, feel free to poke around and watch a few of the thousands of short films the kind souls at Vimeo have made available for your viewing pleasure (via desktop or mobile device – SWEET!). You’re sure to find something interesting and you may just stumble across cinema’s next great filmmaker.

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Patrick Phillips is a Staff Writer for CutPrintFilm, looper.com and geekinsider.com. He reads a lot, drinks too much coffee, buys too many records and loves writing about movies. Find him on Twitter at @savagedetectiv. Follow his movie tastes right here - https://www.taste.io/users/patphiltaste/ratings.

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